Owen Farrell Confident He Would Have Scored Penalty Kick To Secure Draw At Twickenham

Although England fly-half stands by Chris Robshaw’s decision to go for late try, he felt he could have made kick at death

Owen Farrell believes he would have kicked the penalty to earn England a draw at the death against Wales – if he had been handed the tee.

With two minutes remaining, England won a penalty on the right hand touchline. Even if it was at a tight angle, it was well within Farrell’s range with the fly-half already 100 per cent with the boot at Twickenham. However with England trailing by three points, captain Chris Robshaw opted to go for the corner and the chance of a victory from the line-out.

Wales, however, stopped the English maul dead in its track leaving the hosts’ World Cup hopes in serious jeopardy with Australia arriving at Twickenham on Saturday. Although Farrell stood by Robshaw’s decision, he felt he could have made the kick.

“You tend to back yourself as a kicker, but wanted to back the decision,” Farrell said. “We had a chat about the decision together and we came up with the decision that we wanted to go for the win together. As a kicker, if the decision as a group was to go for goal, then you back yourself, that’s why you do the job. But at that time we wanted to go and win the game.

“It’s a risk-reward type thing. When you make the decision as a group to go for the corner you back it. We believed that we could win the game by doing that. If it comes off then the decision is brilliant, but it hasn’t turned out that way this time.

“If doesn’t work out you’ll get criticised. It’s something to jump on. We wanted to go and win the game and back ourselves to do that. It’s not worked out this time, but if we’d got the match-winning try everyone would have praised the decision.”